On this day:

BarnBuster said:

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On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems–and a mounting body count.

In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups. During the next few years, Syrian, Israeli, and United Nations interventions failed to resolve the factional fighting, and on August 20, 1982, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines was ordered to Beirut to help coordinate the Palestinian withdrawal.

The Marines left Lebanese territory on September 10 but returned in strengthened numbers on September 29, following the massacre of Palestinian refugees by a Christian militia. The next day, the first U.S. Marine to die during the mission was killed while defusing a bomb. Other Marines fell prey to snipers. On April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber driving a van devastated the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Then, on October 23, a Lebanese terrorist plowed his bomb-laden truck through three guard posts, a barbed-wire fence, and into the lobby of the Marines Corps headquarters in Beirut, where he detonated a massive bomb, killing 241 marine, navy, and army personnel. The bomb, which was made of a sophisticated explosive enhanced by gas, had an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 pounds of dynamite. The identities of the embassy and barracks bombers were not determined, but they were suspected to be Shiite terrorists associated with Iran.

After the barracks bombing, many questioned whether President Ronald Reagan had a solid policy aim in Lebanon. Serious questions also arose over the quality of security in the American sector of war-torn Beirut. The U.S. peacekeeping force occupied an exposed area near the airport, but for political reasons the marine commander had not been allowed to maintain a completely secure perimeter before the attack. In a national address on October 23, President Reagan vowed to keep the marines in Lebanon, but just four months later he announced the end of the American role in the peacekeeping force. On February 26, 1984, the main force of marines left Lebanon, leaving just a small contingent to guard the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

Two years after the Marine barracks bombing, a U.S. grand jury indicted Imad Mughniyah for his role in the attack and other terrorist activities. He was high on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists. Still, he evaded capture for 25 years before meeting a fitting fate in 2008 — killed by a car bomb in Damascus. Reports claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence service was responsible, perhaps with help from the CIA.

1983 Beirut barracks bombing: ‘The BLT Building is gone!’

At 6:22 on Sunday morning Oct. 23, 1983, a 19-ton yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck entered a public parking lot at the heart of Beirut International Airport.

www.marinecorpstimes.com

Beirut Bombing at 30: 'We Came in Peace' - USNI News

The following is an October 2008 article from Proceedings written by the then-commanding officer of 24th Marine Amphibious Unit in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983. On Sunday morning, 23 October 1983, I awoke as usual at dawn, dressed, and went below to the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit’s Combat...

news.usni.org

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I had about a week left in the Navy when this happened. We had been in the Med the year before with a ship full of Marines, so it hit close to home. Everyone was really pissed about the rules of engagement the Marines were having to live with.

The first use of aeroplanes for reconnaissance and bombing occurred in the Italian-Turkish war in 1911.

On October 23, 1911, an Italian pilot, Captain Carlo Piazza, flew over Turkish lines on the world’s first aerial reconnaissance mission, and on November 1, the first ever aerial bomb was dropped by Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti, on Turkish troops in Libya, from an early model of Etrich Taube aircraft. The Turks, lacking anti-aircraft weapons, were the first to shoot down an aeroplane by rifle fire.[Wikipedia]
This scene is the background to Gustaf Janson’s (1912) ‘A Vision of the Future’ in Pride of War
Further information at:

• http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation history/up to WW 1/first_bomb.htm
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13294524
• http://geographicalimaginations.com/2012/10/01/episodes-in-the-history-of-bombing/

"Black Thursday is the name given to an infamous day in stock market history: Thursday, October 24, 1929, when the market opened 11% lower than the previous day's close, and panicked selling ensued throughout a day of heavy trading. Black Thursday is considered the first day of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, which continued until October 29.

Black Thursday marked the beginning of the end of one of the longest-running bull markets in U.S. history. For nearly the entire decade of the 1920s, stock prices had been steadily climbing, rising to unprecedented heights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increased six-fold from 63 in August 1921 to 381 in September 1929.

While the panicked trading on Black Thursday fueled more panic on subsequent days, the stock market crash of 1929 was actually caused by several factors. They include excess production in several industries, an agricultural recession, rampant speculation (or fear of it), the widespread use of margin to buy stocks, dubious accounting and leveraging practices by investment trusts, the incipient regulation of public utility companies. and a tightening of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.

The stock market crash of 1929 did have one constructive result: It triggered a complete overhaul of the U.S. securities industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established, and substantial new regulations were introduced by legislation such as the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.67"

BarnBuster said:

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"Black Thursday is the name given to an infamous day in stock market history: Thursday, October 24, 1929, when the market opened 11% lower than the previous day's close, and panicked selling ensued throughout a day of heavy trading. Black Thursday is considered the first day of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, which continued until October 29.

Black Thursday marked the beginning of the end of one of the longest-running bull markets in U.S. history. For nearly the entire decade of the 1920s, stock prices had been steadily climbing, rising to unprecedented heights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increased six-fold from 63 in August 1921 to 381 in September 1929.

While the panicked trading on Black Thursday fueled more panic on subsequent days, the stock market crash of 1929 was actually caused by several factors. They include excess production in several industries, an agricultural recession, rampant speculation (or fear of it), the widespread use of margin to buy stocks, dubious accounting and leveraging practices by investment trusts, the incipient regulation of public utility companies. and a tightening of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.

The stock market crash of 1929 did have one constructive result: It triggered a complete overhaul of the U.S. securities industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established, and substantial new regulations were introduced by legislation such as the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.67"

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression

The Roaring Twenties saw an abrupt end in 1929 when the stock market crashed, fueling the Great Depression and sparking a nearly 90% loss in the Dow.

www.investopedia.com

Great Depression | Definition, History, Dates, Causes, Effects, & Facts | Britannica

Great Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory.

www.britannica.com

http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-Stock-Market-Crash-of-1929.pdf

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My view of the depression is different than most. Without it my life would have been nothing like it was. Or it may not have even happened.

My granddaddy (on the Larry side) lost three houses in West Palm Beach in the crash. (the one they lived in and two rentals) Daddy was born down there, and most likely they would have stayed had they not lost everything. (and never met Mamma) But they had to move back to the sticks where my granddaddy made whiskey and was a peddler. I'm not sure of the exact timing, but Daddy did stay on in WPB and live with his uncle for a few years because the uncle had a city job that he was able to keep.

Mamma always said they didn't know about the depression until the government started to help people. She was born in '28, and according to her memory, the first thing the county ever did for them was to come around and spay all their bedding with DDT. They were all happy about it, as bed bugs were a big problem back then.

During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, leads his forces to victory at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France.

Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, a vast French army of 20,000 men stood in his path, greatly outnumbering the exhausted English archers, knights, and men-at-arms.

The battlefield lay on 1,000 yards of open recently plowed ground between two woods, which prevented large-scale maneuvers and thus worked to Henry’s advantage. At 11 a.m. on October 25, the battle commenced. The English stood their ground as French knights, weighed down by their heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield. The French were met by a furious bombardment of artillery from the English archers, who wielded innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards. French cavalrymen tried and failed to overwhelm the English positions, but the archers were protected by a line of pointed stakes. As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French.

Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives (the figures vary according to source, bb) during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. Regardless, with odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history.

Most importantly, the battle was a significant military blow to France and paved the way for further English conquests and successes. The French nobility, weakened by the defeat and divided among themselves, were unable to meet new attacks with effective resistance. Henry managed to subjugate Normandy in 1419, a victory that was followed by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which betrothed Henry to King Charles VI’s daughter Catherine and named him heir to the French crown.

The Battle of Agincourt was immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V.

On October 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The USA PATRIOT Act, as it is officially known, is an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” Bush hoped the bipartisan legislation would empower law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent future terrorist attacks on American soil.

The law was intended, in Bush’s words, to “enhance the penalties that will fall on terrorists or anyone who helps them.” The act increased intelligence agencies’ ability to share information and lifted restrictions on communications surveillance. Law enforcement officials were given broader mandates to fight financial counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering schemes that funded terrorists. The Patriot Act’s expanded definition of terrorism also gave the FBI increased powers to access personal information such as medical and financial records. The Patriot Act superseded all state laws.

While Congress voted in favor of the bill, and some in America felt the bill actually did not go far enough to combat terrorism, the law faced a torrent of criticism. Civil rights activists worried that the Patriot Act would curtail domestic civil liberties and would give the executive branch too much power to investigate Americans under a veil of secrecy—a fear not felt since the protest era of the 1960s and 1970s when the FBI bugged and infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups.

The Patriot Act faced ongoing legal challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union, and some members of Congress who had originally supported the bill expressed misgivings. Nevertheless, a Republican-controlled Congress passed and Bush signed a renewal of the controversial Patriot Act in March 2006. Bush exacerbated the controversy over the renewal of the act by issuing a so-called “signing statement”—an executive exemption from enforcing or abiding by certain clauses within the law—immediately afterward. In 2020, the main provisions of the law expired.

USA PATRIOT Act | Facts, History, Acronym, & Controversy | Britannica

USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. legislation passed by Congress in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and signed into law by President George W. Bush in October 2001. It significantly expanded the search and surveillance powers of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

www.britannica.com

https://www.justice.gov/archive/olp/pdf/patriot_report_from_the_field0704.pdf

EPIC - USA Patriot Act

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) focuses public attention on emerging civil liberties, privacy, First Amendment issues and works to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

epic.org

On this date in 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty as a gift from the people of France on what is now known as Liberty Island in New York Harbor. The 151-foot statue, designated as a national monument in 1924 and restored for its centennial in 1986, serves as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.

Congress authorized the placement of the venture in 1877. William Tecumseh Sherman, a Civil War hero, chose the site in keeping with the wishes of the sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who consulted Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, to deal with the complex structural issues.

An agreement stipulated that Americans were to fund the 154-foot granite pedestal and foundation while the French would take responsibility for the statue itself. However, money problems on both sides of the Atlantic delayed the project. In France, a lottery helped raise funds, while in the United States, the money came from theatrical benefits, art shows, auctions and prize fights.

The statue, made of copper sheeting hung on an iron framework, depicts a robed woman holding a torch. The flame of the torch is coated in gold leaf. Its classical appearance is derived from Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom from slavery, oppression and tyranny. Seven spikes on the crown evoke the Seven Seas and the seven continents. Lady Liberty’s torch signifies enlightenment. She holds a tablet that represents knowledge and notes the date of the Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1776.

Overview + History | Statue of Liberty

www.statueofliberty.org

Today in Internet History:

The first-ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the precursor to the Internet, on October 29, 1969.

Originally funded by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), now DARPA, within the United States Department of Defense, ARPANET was to be used for projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory.

Initially, ARPANET consisted of four interface message processors (IMPs) at:


The message text was meant to be the word “login,” but only the L and O were transmitted before the system crashed.

An IMP log excerpt kept at UCLA that describes setting up a message transmission from the UCLA SDS Sigma 8 host computer to the SRI SDS 940 host computer. The initials “CSK” to the right stand for Charles S Kline.

About an hour after the crash, the system was recovered and a full “login” message was sent as the second transmission.

The first permanent ARPANET link was established weeks later on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.

By 1975, ARPANET was declared “operational” and the Defense Communications Agency took control of it. In 1983, ARPANET was split with US military sites on their own Military Network (MILNET) for unclassified defense department communications. The combination was called the Defense Data Network.

ARPANET was formally decommissioned on February 28, 1990. Well-known computer scientist and a “father of the Internet” Vinton Cerf wrote “Requiem of the ARPANET” in honor of the system:

BarnBuster said:

Today in Internet History:

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The first-ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the precursor to the Internet, on October 29, 1969.

Originally funded by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), now DARPA, within the United States Department of Defense, ARPANET was to be used for projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory.

Initially, ARPANET consisted of four interface message processors (IMPs) at:

the University of California, Los Angeles, which had an SDS Sigma 7 as the first computer attached to it;​

the Stanford Research Institute’s Augmentation Research Center, where Douglas Engelbart is credited with creating the NLS (oN-Line System) hypertext system, with an SDS 940 that ran NLS being the first host attached;​

the University of California, Santa Barbara with the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center’s IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT being the machine attached;​

and at the University of Utah’s Computer Science Department, which had a DEC PDP-10 running TENEX.​

The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charles S Kline at 10:30 pm on October 29, from the campus’ Boelter Hall to the Stanford Research Institute’s SDS 940 host computer.​

The message text was meant to be the word “login,” but only the L and O were transmitted before the system crashed.

An IMP log excerpt kept at UCLA that describes setting up a message transmission from the UCLA SDS Sigma 8 host computer to the SRI SDS 940 host computer. The initials “CSK” to the right stand for Charles S Kline.

About an hour after the crash, the system was recovered and a full “login” message was sent as the second transmission.

The first permanent ARPANET link was established weeks later on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.

By 1975, ARPANET was declared “operational” and the Defense Communications Agency took control of it. In 1983, ARPANET was split with US military sites on their own Military Network (MILNET) for unclassified defense department communications. The combination was called the Defense Data Network.

ARPANET was formally decommissioned on February 28, 1990. Well-known computer scientist and a “father of the Internet” Vinton Cerf wrote “Requiem of the ARPANET” in honor of the system:

​

It was the first, and being first, was best,​

​

but now we lay it down to ever rest.​

​

Now pause with me a moment, shed some tears.​

​

For auld lang syne, for love, for years and years​

​

of faithful service, duty done, I weep.​

​

Lay down thy packet, now, O friend, and sleep.​

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Now I know who to blame for all this wasted time.

injinji said:

Now I know who to blame for all this wasted time.

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...and the decline of newspapers and printed books. I still have to hold both and turn the pages, smell the newsprint and the unique scent of an older book, the full experience as it were. Just can't get used to a tablet.

BarnBuster said:

...and the decline of newspapers and printed books. I still have to hold both and turn the pages, smell the newsprint and the unique scent of an older book, the full experience as it were. Just can't get used to a tablet.

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All very true. But when I was writing, for four years I wouldn't read anything printed before 1725. It would have been a little harder to get my hands on the actual books.

Another crossover. This is a sad one. Fifty years ago today we lost Sky Dog.

1971 - Duane Allman
Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle on a Macon, Georgia street while trying to swerve to avoid a tractor-trailer and was thrown from the motorcycle. The motorcycle bounced into the air, landed on Allman and skidded another 90 feet with Allman pinned underneath. He was three weeks shy of his 25th birthday.

On October 30, 1961, a specially equipped Soviet Tu-95 bomber flew toward Novaya Zemlya, a remote chain of islands in the Arctic Ocean that the U.S.S.R. frequently used as a site for nuclear tests, accompanied by a smaller plane equipped with a movie camera and instruments for monitoring air samples.

But this wasn't just a routine nuclear test. Attached to the underside of the plane was a thermonuclear bomb that was so big it wouldn't fit inside the normal interior bomb bay. The cylindrical device was 26 feet (8 meters) long and weighed nearly 59,525 pounds (27 metric tons).

The device had the prosaic official name of izdeliye 602 ("item 602"), but it's gone down in history with the nickname of Tsar Bomba – the Russian way of calling it the emperor of bombs.

That name was no exaggeration. Tsar Bomba's yield is estimated to have been roughly 57 megatons, about 3,800 times the power of the 15 kiloton atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. On that day in 1961, it was released on a parachute in order to slow its descent and give the bomber and its crew a chance to escape. In order to give the two planes a chance to survive – and this was calculated as no more than a 50% chance – Tsar Bomba was deployed by a giant parachute weighing nearly a tonne. The bomb would slowly drift down to a predetermined height – 13,000ft (3,940m) – and then detonate. By then, the two bombers would be nearly 50km (30 miles) away. It should be far enough away for them to survive.

When the giant bomb finally detonated about 13,000 feet (4 kilometers) over its target, the blast was so powerful that it destroyed everything within a nearly 22-mile (35-kilometer) radius, and generated a mushroom cloud that towered nearly 200,000 feet (60 kilometers).

On Novaya Zemlya, the effects were catastrophic. In the village of Severny, some 55km (34 miles) from Ground Zero, all houses were completely destroyed. In Soviet towns 100 miles (160 kilometers) from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, and brick and stone structures suffered damage.

The original design – a three layered bomb, with uranium layers separating each stage – would have had a yield of 100 megatons – 3,000 times the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Before it was ready to be tested, the uranium layers that would have helped the bomb achieve its enormous yield were replaced with layers of lead, which lessened the intensity of the nuclear reaction.

The Soviets had built a weapon so powerful that they were unwilling to even test it at its full capacity.

After being largely forgotten for many years, Tsar Bomba was back in the news in August 2020, when Russian state nuclear power company Rosatom posted on YouTube a vintage film that showed an aerial view of the explosion and the towering cloud it created.

Andrei Sakharov And The Massive 'Tsar Bomba' That Turned Him Against Nukes

Andrei Sakharov, who was born 100 years ago this week, is widely remembered as one of the 20th century's most outspoken and dedicated champions of human rights and freedom. He was also the "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb" and was involved in the world's most devastating nuclear weapons test.

www.rferl.org

Tsar Bomba: The Most Powerful Nuclear Weapon Ever Built

In 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba, still the biggest, most powerful nuclear bomb ever built. One of the cameramen who recorded the event said it sounded "as if the Earth has been killed."

science.howstuffworks.com

The Soviet Weapons Program - The Tsar Bomba

Life in much of America came to a standstill in October 1918 as municipalities shuttered public gathering places such as schools, churches, theaters and saloons. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still decades away from establishment, however, responses to the pandemic varied from city to city. In San Francisco, judges held court sessions outside in public squares, and citizens who did not wear protective gauze masks—dubbed “mask slackers” by the press—could be fined $5 or even sent to jail. “Obey the laws, and wear the gauze,” urged public service posters.

Arguing that children would be safer surrounded by school nurses than at home, New York City Health Commissioner Royal Copeland chose to keep schools open along with other public venues. In one concession, Copeland mandated staggered opening and closing hours of businesses and factories in order to minimize rush-hour crowds on subway trains.

Few cities were struck harder than Philadelphia where Public Health Director Wilmer Krusen ignored pleas from doctors and refused to cancel a parade to promote the sale of government war bonds that was attended by 200,000 people. “Three days later every bed in the city’s hospitals was filled,” says Kenneth C. Davis, author of “More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War.” “Philadelphia was almost on the verge of a total collapse as a functioning city.”

Over 11,000 Philadelphia residents died in October 1918, including 759 on the worst day of the outbreak. Drivers of open carts kept a near-constant vigil circling streets while hollering, “Bring out your dead!” They then deposited the collected corpses in mass graves excavated by steam shovels.

After taking the lives of 195,000 Americans in October 1918, the Spanish flu dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, although it had a brief resurgence after crowds flooded city streets to celebrate the November 11 announcement of the armistice. Between war and sickness, life expectancy fell from 51 to 39 years of age in 1918, according to Davis.

By the time it abated in 1920, the Spanish flu had killed 675,000 Americans and left hundreds of thousands of children orphaned. Not only did more Americans die of the Spanish flu than in World War I, more died than in all the wars of the 20th century combined. Globally, the pandemic infected a third of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people.

Yet for all the lives lost and changed forever, the Spanish flu quickly faded from public consciousness. “It fell into this black hole of history,” Davis says. “Impacted families never seemed to talk much about it, perhaps because it was so terrible that no one wanted to think about it again. That’s the way the country also dealt with it.”

While it may have gone unmentioned, the Spanish flu left a lasting imprint in the decades to come. “The combination of the flu and the war made Americans afraid of what was out there in the wider world, so there was a growing notion of becoming an isolationist country and keeping out foreign elements,” Davis says. “It combines for a period of great fear—fear of communism, bolshevism and socialism. There’s a tremendous growth of the Ku Klux Klan because people were afraid of what was foreign. The whole nativist impulse was fed by people’s fear generated by flu and war.”

HG Well's, War of the Worlds was released on radio by Orson Wells 10/30/1938. Cause panic and mass hysteria.

The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never been out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number of television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was most memorably dramatised in a 1938 radio programme directed by and starring Orson Welles that allegedly caused public panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was fictional. The novel has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert H. Goddard, who, inspired by the book, helped develop both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing 71 years later.[6][7]

Other than the death and dying, the big thing that stands out to me about the Spanish Flu is the name. There were outbreaks all around the world, but since every country except for Spain had war time censorship, they were the only ones to report about it.

"Nov. 4, 1979 Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 66 people hostage, “including diplomatic staff, Marine guards and local Iranian [employees] in an assault that appears to have left the government temporarily paralyzed,” according to an account by The Washington Post’s Nicholas Cumming-Bruce.

That set off a protracted crisis that would last through the end of Jimmy Carter’s first and only term as president, and into the first day of the Reagan administration. The Iranian government, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said it would release the hostages if the United States agreed to extradite the deposed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

But the United States refused. A week and a half later, Khomeini ordered the release of female and African American hostages, leaving 53. In April 1980, eight U.S. soldiers died in a failed rescue attempt when a helicopter collided with a transport plane. A hostage was later released due to illness. In January 1981, the United States and Iran finally reached an agreement to free the remaining 52.

By the time Iranians let them go, the hostages had spent 444 days in captivity. Thirty-six years after their capture, in December 2015, President Obama signed legislation to compensate each of the surviving 37 former hostages or the estates of 16 others who had died since their release, up to $4.4 million."

https://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/The_Iran_Hostage_Crisis(PrinterFriendly).pdf
https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472108670-03.pdf
https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/838/The Iranian Hostage Crisis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Edit: Lessons Learned from EAGLE CLAW
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a402471.pdf

On this day, 10 years ago… I was in China getting married.

Three Berries said:

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What part of this historical revelation occured "On this day"?
Noted for future Trivial Pursuit marathons.







On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president. He was the first Republican president and his victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West. No ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the Southern states, an omen of the impending Civil War.[156][157] Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, or 39.8% of the total in a four-way race, carrying the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon.[158] His victory in the electoral college was decisive: Lincoln had 180 votes to 123 for his opponents.[159]


August 13, 1860

The last beardless photograph of Lincoln. John M. Read commissioned Philadelphia artist John Henry Brown to paint a good-looking miniature of Lincoln “whether or not the subject justified it.” This ambrotype is one of six taken on Monday, August 13, 1860 in Butler's daguerreotype studio (of which only two survive), made for the portrait painter.




November 25, 1860

An 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell wrote to Lincoln, asking “let your whiskers grow... you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.” and the president-elect responded “As to the whiskers have never worn any do you not think people would call it a silly affection if I were to begin it now?” Regardless, the next time he visited his barber William Florville, he announced “Billy, let's give them a chance to grow.” By the time he began his inaugural journey by train from Illinois to Washington, D.C., he had a full beard.